Bethany United Methodist Church

United Methodist Church serving Clio, Michigan

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Summer In the Food Pantry

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NEXT Food Truck Distribution at Bethany UMC is September 27th @ 9am!

Food Pantry Service Days in our pantry are Monday & Wednesday (For Pantry Details Click Here)

Recap of Summer Food Pantry Activities Below!

We held food truck distributions in June, July and August this summer and are looking forward to more. Also, our Food Pantry Patrol has been working to secure additional partnerships to strengthen our pantry. West Vienna UMC continues to give generously to the pantry. Our partnership with Food Bank of Eastern Michigan also sustains us. The Pantry Patrol has also secured partnerships with Dollar General and Aldi’s to help ensure our ability to continue to assist our community members experiencing food insecurity. Our partnership with Pastor Blair from Second Helping has also made the food truck distributions successful. Here’s some images from some of our recent donations with West Vienna UMC and our other partners.

If you didn’t read the details of our June Food Pantry distribution, we did a pictorial journey through this to help future participants know how things work. Check it out now!

In July, our community outreach at BUMC served 261 families consisting of 791 individuals at our Food Truck Distribution on July 22nd. Here’s some images from that distribution.

In August, we were able to serve 210 families, 597 individuals, and passed out 23,000 lbs of food! We were once again assisted by Pastor Blair and Second Helping, The Food Bank of Eastern Michigan and many volunteers from Clio Bethany UMC. Check out these images!

NEXT Food Truck Distribution at Bethany UMC is September 27th @ 9am!

Food Pantry Service Days in our pantry are Monday & Wednesday (For Pantry Details Click Here)

Food Truck Distribution at Bethany UMC

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On June 27th, alongside Second Helping and the Eastern Food Bank of Michigan, our Bethany Food Pantry Patrol served 222 local families amounting to 654 individuals served! At our distribution on May 30th – we served 185 households (565 individuals) a total of 14,447 POUNDS of Food!

Maybe you have been interested in coming to a food truck distribution either as a guest to receive food or as a volunteer. By the way – you can volunteer even if you belong to another church or no church! And ALL are welcome to come and receive food, always!

The leaders of our Food Pantry Patrol took a lot of pictures of this latest event and we wanted to show you what a day at the Food Truck really looks like so you can come and serve or be served without any anxiety.

Food Truck Distribution Day – A Picture Story

One guest arrives before 6:30 a.m. Our pantry leaders also arrived early!
The Eastern Food Bank truck arrives on the west side of the church by 8:00
Plastic bags opened to make packing go quickly. Menards donated two boxes of bags!
John B. setting pallets of food and beverages along the west parking lot.
Ready to unload more pallets!
On the east side Bill and Karen are ready with forms, smiles and Post-its.
Harlow directs cars into several lines at the back of the church.
Third line forming prior to beginning the distribution.
Nick and Harlow team up on traffic duties.
Station one – bakery items
Bakery items ready to go
Bagging lettuce bunches.
Bagging Produce and getting each station setup
Ready to distribute food and beverages
Beverage Crew ready for distribution!
Unwrapping cucumber boxes
That’s a lot of cucumbers!
John moves the dumpster for easy clean up later in the morning.
Drive through begins by 9:30! Delleen, Sue and Steve bag canned goods
Cars are loaded from both sides on the west parking lot.
Gene and Herman distribute beverages. Our back parking lot is lined with cars.
Last station, dairy. Eric of Second Helping assists with loading cars.
Helpers of all sizes!
Kory brings cold water!
We know the force is strong in this one!
Grapes!
Jim always brings a smile.
Rick of Mayville helps manage traffic and load cars.
The distribution is done by 11:30 and clean up begins.
Gene, Herman, Eric, Belinda and Rick pack up the left over lettuce for live stock use. Left over grapes are in the kitchen for Sunday. A good day of Christ’s work.

As you can see – Volunteers have a lot of fun! We have volunteers of all ages and ability levels. There is a place for every set of hands to help here. The best part is our guests get a lot of great food! You can be a part of an upcoming Food Truck Distribution. Contact Kory in our office at 810-686-5151 and she can get you the details on volunteering.

Upcoming Food Truck Distribution Dates:

  • Monday, July 22 – 3:30pm distribution
  • Friday, August 16 – 9:30am distribution

Community Food Truck May 30th

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Bethany UMC will be hosting a Community Food Truck on Thursday, May 30, at 10:00 AM. Anyone from the community is welcome to come to the church parking lot and line up to receive food. You will stay in your car and be directed on how to proceed through the line. ALL ARE WELCOME!

Did you know that we have a Food Pantry that is available to the Clio Community year round? If you are looking for assistance or looking for a place to donate groceries – please connect with our pantry.

Learn More about Bethany Food Pantry

Thank you to all who make this community food pantry possible: Our Pantry Patrol, the Eastern Food Bank of Michigan, our partners at West Vienna UMC, and all of the generous donations from members of our church and community. Thank you!

End of Summer 2023 Update

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Hello Church Family & Friends,

It’s been a bit since I (Elizabeth Whiting, webmaster at Bethany UMC) have updated the site. My apologies for that, life got in the way a bit. It’s been a busy summer for me personally. I attended the Michigan Area Annual Conference and then went up north to celebrate my little brother’s high school graduation. Then, there was an epic family road trip vacation to Denver, Colorado in July. In August, I went to Grand Rapids for a work conference for a week and am now preparing to take my sister’s eldest child off to college at MSU this week! In the midst of all of that, there’s been time for some summer ministry fun as well! If you have been away for the summer too, let me fill you in on 10 highlights around the church halls this summer!

  1. New carpet was installed in our sanctuary! 2 Sundays in July we worshipped in the Fellowship Hall while the carpet installation was in progress.
  2. Pastor Kayla has been hosting the Backyard Bookish Bunch in her backyard. Our last book club meeting is tomorrow, August 20th at 6:00pm and we are talking about Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  3. Carmen Berlin of Otisville started a grief group here at Bethany in May and I’ve been a bit remiss at promoting it here. Grief group meets on the 1st & 3rd Thursday of each month at 6:30pm in the Fireplace room. I’ve attended the grief group and find it very valuable to talk through grief with someone else. Whether your loss is recent or distant, this group can benefit all who are walking through grief of any kind.
  4. Our Bethany Food Pantry has been in high demand! We fed 20 families in the month of July. That’s over 80 people that were able to eat because of the generous donations of our members and community. The food pantry continues to be busy and can use your donations anytime.
  5. We celebrated Joyce Dunlay’s 100th birthday after church in August. It was the best time! Happy Birthday to Joyce!
  6. We hosted about 30 kids for VBS in July across 3 days. We provided dinner every night along with a Bible story, craft time, an interactive story, a science project and fun & games outdoors along with some music and dancing. It was a lot of fun. We had some new faces and we saw many kids back from last year. It took a ton of volunteers. Thank you to all who are a part of making VBS happen.
  7. Our VBS Mission project is collecting socks and underwear for Clio Area elementary students. We can take any size and color through the end of the month of August. Drop them off during regular church hours.
  8. We collected school supplies that were distributed to Clio Area School students at a community wide event on August 15th.
  9. Our family fun nights were a success over the summer. We’ve ended a week early so that on August 23rd we can join with the entire community at the Clio Amphitheater to celebrate Clio’s Sesquicentennial. Happy 150th Birthday Clio!
  10. Amidst all of the fun of the summer, we also are in a period of discerning our future after receiving some surprising news about our cooperative parish. We will not be continuing to develop our cooperative parish. We continue to have a close relationship with Otisville UMC and are looking forward to continuing to do ministry with them as we share a pastor. Be in prayer for the people of Otisville and Bethany as we both discern what our future looks in our new reality.

If your group in the church is making plans for the fall, be sure to get your dates and information into the church office soon. The deadline for the September issue of the Tower Notes is August 21st. Keep watching the page here to see how our fall plans unfold! I can’t wait to see how the next season of ministry enriches our community and deepens our faith in Jesus. Come & be a part of it!

Get the details on the Sesquicentennial event on August 23rd below!

Roller Skating with the Police Night SUCCESS!

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On Tuesday, March 7th during our regular skate time, we hosted the Skate with the Police event. We had so much fun!

All of the Law Enforcement Officers that visited us

We had 63+ skaters. HUGE Thanks to Jack & Debbie Morgan. Skate with a Cop is their vision and idea. They organize the law enforcement officers who join us. They also paid for all of our skaters in honor of Officer Rob Neilsen who is battling cancer. Along with their granddaughter, they also made treat bags for all of the kids to take home.

Millington Chief Oliver & Family

We were joined by several members of the Genesee County Sheriff Department, City of Clio Police Chief Millstead (who brought his own skates!), Millington Police Chief Oliver (who was our best backward skater of the night), And K9 Ripley and his partner from Huron MetroPark.

Clio Chief Millstead in Blue

Our usual skating volunteer crew was here and ready for our big day minus one of our volunteers who is in Florida. Some of our regular skating families also stepped up and helped out a ton as well.

In place of our normal skate challenges, our challenge to the kids on this special night was to meet as many of the law enforcement officers and fist bump or high five as possible! One of our skaters told me he gave out 15 high fives to law enforcement.

K9 Ripley getting his sweet reward

This was a REALLY full floor with lots of families who have not skated with us before. BUT – things really went pretty smoothly considering how big of a crowd we have. Somehow, no one got hurt, I don’t even think we passed out any ice! And, we didn’t run out of any particular size skate! We didn’t break any skates! God makes a way!

After skating, we made a smooth transition into our ice cream social thanks to the many men & women of our church who just knocked it out of the park! Thanks to a last minute run to get more ice cream and we doled out just about 100 cups of ice cream (there were a few kids who got to have seconds!) There were so many helpers and we are so appreciative! There was a major team in the kitchen who pulled the ice cream social together very efficiently. We also had volunteers and our skating families who helped tremendously getting tables & chairs out.

Ice Cream Social after skating

It was a really great evening of skating and it was so awesome to see our Fellowship Hall absolutely full of people. Our thanks are with all of the congregation who have been praying over our skating ministry every Tuesday night & beyond as well.

Thanks to a last minute assist from a congregation member who took a bunch of pictures and videos of skating & the interactions with officers, our evening ended by seeing a snippet covering our event on the 11pm news on TV12! It aired again on the 6am news.

Kids enjoy Skate with a Cop

What great publicity for our church & for the police who were so interactive with the children and families who came to skating.

Thank you church for pulling all of this together. Thank you to Jack Morgan for having this vision, organizing all of the police officers & promoting the event. Thank you to all of our skating families and community who attended the event as well.

This was a night where we as a church really brought a lot of people from our community together and it felt really, really good. Surely the saints who have made roller skating possible at Bethany UMC – Harold, Ruby & Dan Boyse – smiled down upon us seeing how our community came together over roller skating.

Here’s a video recap of our event for your enjoyment!

Rewatch previous video worship with one of the following links:

Visit our Facebook Page Videos Tab to view all of our recent videos

Uncommon Wisdom: In September 2024 Pastor Sarah will share some uncommon biblical wisdom during this 5 part preaching series.

Reshaped: What We’re Made For – In this 4 part series from August 2024 – Pastor Sarah led us through a worship series about getting animated and embracing change. AND we played with a lot of play-do! Experience this series again!

Welcome Pastor Sarah Elliott – Pastor Sarah joins Bethany UMC on July 1, 2024. These are some of her first sermons as our pastor.

June 2024 Transition Worship – We had a variety of worship in absence of traditional preaching. A service of Scripture and Song, a guest speaker from Asbury CDC, an opportunity to experience preaching from our Michigan Annual Conference, an old fashioned hymn sing and we welcomed the Rev. John Hice, our retired District Superintendent.

Lay Speakers Includes many sermons from our laity over the years including Jerry Mowl, our All Music Sunday, and most recently Randy Hildebrandt of God’s Country Community Ministry. We also include here a guest clergy speaker, Kim Bos from November of 2023.

View all past online worship experience choices

Meet Pastor Sarah

Pastor Sarah Elliott

Pastor Sarah Elliott joins Bethany UMC on July 1, 2024. She comes to us from the Baltimore-Washington Conference. Along with her husband, Patrick, and their 3 children, they have followed God's call across the country and landed here in Clio, Michigan. Use the button below if you want to set up time for a one-on-one.

Missions

Mission Projects – 2024

Everyone can participate!

  • Ongoing – LOVE Food Pantry – Accepting cash donations and non-perishable food donations
  • Aluminum & Steel Tabs and Bottle Caps – Den & Karen Nichols collect these in support of Ronald McDonald House, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The monies earned from this collection go to providing a place for families to stay at Ronald McDonald house while their children are being treated there.
  • Ongoing – Collect items for Operation Christmas Child.  Toys, hygiene products, crayons, hats, gloves, etc. must be able to fit in shoe box, no liquids, and no weapon or war like toys. Bring them to church office or youth ministry!

If you have a need or can fulfill a need in our community, please connect with our church office.

Regular Worship Activities

Bethany United Methodist Church - Clio, MI

We are worshipping in person and online.  Please stay in touch with us here on our website and on our Facebook page.

Watch and See!

Sundays:

9:30am – Sunday School for all ages (with Breakfast)

10:30am In Person or Online Worship on Facebook

1st Sunday  – Communion – The UMC has an open table.

Praise God through Bible study, music, and fellowship. Youth & Children activities and groups on Wednesday afternoons.

Prayer Requests

Are you in need of prayer? Do you want a member of our congregation or pastoral team to contact you, a family member or a friend? Please feel free to reach out to us with your prayer requests, or to share your joys or the ways that God is working in your life.

Prayer Request Form
Prayer Requests
Join Bethany United Methodist Church in Clio, Michigan on the mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors

Keep in Touch!

Bethany United Methodist Church
353 Vienna Street
Clio, Michigan 48420
Phone: 810-686-5151
Email Us!

Church Office Hours:

Mon – Thurs 9am – 2pm Closed Fridays

Staff at lunch from 12pm to 1pm. 

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